A Museum of Joy!

Archaic building, museum
Image Source: https://www.timeout.com/toronto/things-to-do/best-museums-in-toronto

Hope you are having a wonderful reading week so far!

Wherever you are at this time, I hope you are able to take a breather and enjoy time with yourself, family, and/or friends (even if it’s done virtually). This has been a challenging time to be actively learning, so hopefully this little museum tour of quotes will bring you as much warmth as they do for me. If you have any quotes special to you, please feel welcome to drop them in the comments!

Little note: If you want, it might be nice to send a snapshot of one of these quotes to someone you haven’t spoken to in a while or just someone close to you to start a conversation and remind them you’re thinking of them!

The Thomas Fischer Rare Book Library
Image Source: http://www.newcollege.utoronto.ca/student-blog/u-of-t-all-nighters/

Here lies the museum of quotes that bring me joy:

“You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. - James Baldwin, Conversations with James Baldwin

“How sweet. That rain. How something that lives only to fall can be nothing but sweet.” - Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“The first feminist gesture is to say: “Ok. They’re looking at me. But I’m looking at them.” The act of deciding to look, of deciding that the world is not defined by how people see me, but by how I see them - Agnes Varda, Filming Desire

Van Gogh's painting of yellow sunflowers
Image Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/arts/design/van-gogh-sunflowers-facebook-museums-on-three-continents.html

Do you know why we have the sunflowers? It’s not because Vincent van Gogh suffered. It’s because Vincent van Gogh had a brother who loved him. Through all the pain, he had a tether, a connection to the world. And that… is the focus of the story we need. Connection. - Hannah Gadsby, Nanette

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy. - Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Still from film, Spirited Away
Image Source: https://www.teahub.io/photos/full/229-2297359_spirited-away-wallpaper-anime-aesthetic-spirited-away.png

“I would like to make a film to tell children "it's good to be alive".” - Hayao Miyazaki

“You can live your whole life like it’s a puzzle, put together from the pieces of different sets. Your whole life is full of these pieces that don’t quite fit. But at some point, you start to think it’s you. You’re the piece that doesn’t quite fit. And you spend so long with that feeling that the feeling becomes your home. And it can be jarring when you discover one day that you suddenly don’t feel that way anymore. At first you don’t trust it. But then gradually, you do. - Bojack Horseman

“I know my life's meaningful because" - and here he stopped, and looked shy, and was silent for a moment before he continued - " because I'm a good friend. I love my friends, and I care about them, and I think I make them happy. - Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday… I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp... I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled… That is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way. - Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters

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